Boiling Over
by Spiletta42
Summary: While arranging a job, Mal finds Inara's red dress all manner of distracting. Firefly. Romance Mal/Inara 820 words.


Boiling Over by Spiletta42

Disclaimer: Joss has the shiniest toys.

Firefly, Mal/Inara

Rating: M™©

Spoilers: Minor spoilers only.

A/N: Written for the Porn Battle, hosted by Oxoniensis. The prompt? _Mal/Inara, Fog._

**Boiling Over**

Inara in red. That sort of thing had a way of turning Mal all manner of stupid. Red lipstick, a red dress, likely even a red gunny sack would get his engines turning. Or gold. Gold worked for him too. And green. Blue . . . that peach number she had . . . brown. Most any color, truth be said. But red was his favorite, and she was wearing that now.

Plus she'd gone and curled her hair, the soft waves of it framing her face and tumbling down her back. It made a man want to touch it. Long to touch it. He reckoned it was soft, and he reckoned he really ought not think about that. Of course not thinking about Inara's hair somehow led him back to paying all sorts of attention to how the red of her lips matched her dress.

"Mal." She smiled at him.

Now gorramit, that was unfair. A man had no chance at getting his brain working with Inara smiling right at him like that, and he needed this to go smooth. Not that it seemed likely, what with this plan riding on this doctor fellow believing that he and Inara were man and wife. Simon had a decent criminal mind, specially when River needed something, but there was definitely a flaw in --

"Shall we?" She took his arm, and they headed out to meet Simon's rich and gullible young mark.

The business itself went off without a hitch, at least the part where they made themselves a deal. The trouble started after. Or, if Mal was honest with himself, that was when the rather steadily brewing trouble finally boiled over. The heat had started to rise when Inara leaned close and laid her hand on Mal's thigh. The electric touch, the red fingernails, the smell of the light perfume she claimed was soap -- a man could only take so much.

So when they finally took their leave and slipped out into the night, Mal's head was just a mite foggy. Or maybe it was that other parts of him were a whole lot less foggy. Parts with a keen interest in letting his fingers slide down to the bare skin at Inara's waist as he escorted her out the door. Parts that took special notice of hot skin. Parts that wanted more hot skin, and schemed against him to get it.

He should have let his hand drop from her waist after a block or so, but he left it, the heat of her skin spreading up his arm until his blood caught fire, the flames licking at his common sense, and in that state he thought it a fine idea to cut through an alley. Until a suspicious pair of eyes stared down at them, eyes Mal worried had followed them and might spoil the job. Then the trouble boiled over.

Mal spun Inara up against the alley wall, one hand still burning on her bare waist, the other slipping into her hair, and he leaned in for what he swore was meant to be a fake kiss. He never meant to let his lips touch hers. The hand in her hair was meant to shield their faces from the eyes staring down the alley, not draw her mouth to his in a rush of passion.

The taste of her made him dizzy. He felt the weight of her silky curls laying over the back of his hand, the soft burn of her flesh beneath his fingers, the press of her warm body against those troublesome scheming parts. Only the need to check on spying eyes gave him the willpower to pull back from that kiss, and then he stood staring at her, hand still hot against her waist, his foggy brain torn between apologizing and starting an argument to cover his foolishness.

That's when he noticed her hands, one finger tracing along his jaw, the other hand creeping over his hip to let those bright red nails curl into his back.

He kissed her again.

She made a little sound in her throat that made him all kinds of crazy, and then her hands set about opening his pants. And he was more kinds of crazy than he'd even known, because he stopped her.

They stared at each other, short of breath. He'd never wanted a woman more, but he wanted Inara on his ship, and in his life, not once in an alley and then gone. "Not here."

"Come to my shuttle."

All kinds of crazy. He swallowed, the heat of her waist still scorching his fingers as traitorous parts of him thought up all manner of distracting notions. "That could get problematical."

"No." She smiled and shook her head. "It's actually quite simple." And she kissed him.

Nope, this was anything but simple. Then again, he'd never been one to stay out of trouble.

_Firefly™©_ and related properties are Registered Trademarks of Mutant Enemy. No copyright infringement intended. No profits made here. © Spiletta42, January 2008.


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